LOTRO's switch to Free-to-Play triples revenue

[Tessian]

I still have no interest in playing an MMO again, but good to see this paid off. I play League of Legends still which uses a similar model and I think it's great.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/3232 ... y_Game.php

[Don]

I don't see a timeframe referenced there. Is this over a month? Did their operating cost went up? There was a lot of advertising for LOTRO when it went F2P, how much did that cost? I've noticed when a previously sub model game goes F2P you get a lot of people who don't mind sinking $50-$100 to the game as a long term investment on the premise that there will be no monthly fee so if you bought everything you think you need, it's still cheaper to pop down $100 now then $50 + $15/month for an year, so the revenue is going to be frontloaded. Obviously it's still good to have money now versus later, but I don't hear much about DDO after its initial F2P. Certainly I don't hear about it growing its revenue and in MMORPG nobody is ever obliged to tell you about a decline.

[Zeus]

I think the free-to-play model is a great one...to a degree. Last thing you want is the rich-bitch kids being over-powered 'cause they have more money. If they can assure that's limited, then you're paying for your enjoyment which I see no issues with.

I'm assuming, of course, that you get decent content for you dollar. If you're getting 2 hours worth of content for $10, it would be shit. But priced right it's a fine business model

[Shrinweck]

From what I've ready LOTRO free-to-play arrangement is as good as it gets and it's not like they're charging $10 a month extra for you to deal 25% extra damage. I'm all for making aging MMORPGs free to play to keep them alive and drum up new interest.

[kali o.]

Just to pipe in on this, since I played both of Turbines F2P experiments -- LotRO really, really nickles and dimes you. To the point where you really are an idiot (or have tons of free time to grind out Turbine points) if you try to play this game solely on points (free or otherwise).

You can, fairly easily, hit the 50 cap and unlock about half the current content packs. You can grind out throwaway toons for points to unlock all the content packs/expansions with some steady effort. But the content packs are really only half the story...you are gonna be pretty gimp without traits, you will feel the money cap pinch by level 20ish, you won't have a mount, you will have no bags and forget about spending DP. There are tons of pay unlocks and all are character specific. Some options can't even be unlocked via cash period, unless you are a monthly subscriber (monster play). The whole thing left me feeling like Turbine was getting greedy and tricky (as opposed to the setup in DDOnline).

Last I played, the best value for money was to subscribe for one month -- that'll earn you 500 tp, unlock all extra's on every toon you log in (gold cap, mount quest, etc) and when it runs out you will still be premium. Not sure if that still works, but keep it in mind if you give the game a shot and like it.

[Shrinweck]

Well the point of the F2P system isn't necessarily not nickle and diming people, it's letting people pay for content at their own pace, as opposed to paying $10-$15 a month and possibly only getting an hour out of it. Expecting to get through the game and play through a great deal of the content isn't at all feasible for Turbine to make money. And level 20ish without a mount? Who are the pussies complaining about that? If I recall you didn't get one in the core game until 35.

[Don]

If F2P didn't nickle and dime you how are they supposed to make money? From what I've gathered you're generally better off just finding a copy of LOTRO that's super cheap and sub for one month and unlock whatever you can, since whatever you unlocked stays with you even after you stopped the subscription. Trying to play the game without paying around $50-$100 ends up having an experience that's generally considerable untolerable for the average MMORPG player. I'd think F2P ends up getting an initial surge of revenue since it's kind of like selling lifetime subs (you just have to buy enough to be sure you don't need to buy more in the foreseeable future) but lifetime subs clearly cut into your long time profitabilty unless you plan to shut the game down. Of course having some money now is still better than nothing.

[Julius Seeker]

Well the point of the F2P system isn't necessarily not nickle and diming people, it's letting people pay for content at their own pace, as opposed to paying $10-$15 a month and possibly only getting an hour out of it.

That's a key point for me. I have been playing the game, but I am an infrequent player; and this method works well for how I want to play the game; it might only be 5 or less hours in a month, or even no hours. I am finding that it'll be about 1-3 sessions every 6-8 weeks or so; that's how I often play PC games (particularly ones like this, Starcraft 2, and Civilization 5).

[Shrinweck]

Lifetime subs hit a different audience than F2P. I've never even considered getting a lifetime sub and have probably never been playing an MMORPG long enough for it to start paying off. I think I came close with LOTRO. At the very least the F2P pay cycle has reinvigorated the game's membership and what more could you ask for for what is essentially a bit of a gamble.

f2pmovement.com pretty much makes all the arguments I want to make. The founder just absolutely glowed at what LOTRO has done in last months PC Gamer.

[Don]

Assuming you've some interest in playing a game for a long time (otherwise you wouldn't be interested in a lifetime sub to begin with), and assuming lifetime subs do not cover the cost of future expansions (this is usually true), there's functionally no difference between paying say $200 for a lifetime sub, or buying $200 worth of F2P stuff now so you don't have to buy anything again in the forseeable future. Unless you spent $200 all on horses that's got to be enough to last you in the forseeable future the same way a lifetime sub is. This is of course assuming the game doesn't have mechanism to take away what you have bought if you're not a subscriber (this is generally a safe assumption).

Now games may have some features that you can only access with a subscription or at least have a recurring cost, but again if you buy $200 of stuff that's got to be enough to cover any recurring cost in the forseeable future assuming the cost is reasonable. For example if you can spend $5 to get 1 month of monster play whereas lifetime sub gets it free forever, spending $100 on monster play is 20 months and assuming you're not playing the game continously that should last you say 3-5 years easily. And I'd argue that price is way too expensive for a recurring F2P cost. There might be things you can't access at all without a subscription, but that varies from game to game so it's hard to make any kind of prediction based on that.

[Shellie]

Makes me wish I had bought a lifetime sub, I already spend more than that almost on monthly fees. Monster Play is tons of fun, and when I played, that was ALL some people played.

[Don]

Lifetime subs is a net losing deal for the MMORPG developers though, so they usually don't offer it unless they think the game won't do well or they really need the cash now. It's common to sink hundreds or even thousands of dollars into a MMORPG over the course of its lifetime if it's something you enjoy playing. The only way a MMORPG can come ahead of lifetime subs is if the game sucks so much that you quit right away (likely to have reputation repercussions) or they shut down the game before you can get enough out of your lifetime sub, and obviously both are poor choices!

[Shrinweck]

So few people go for the lifetime membership that I don't think it's as big a deal as you're making it. Spending $200+ (I think this is what LOTRO was selling their lifetime subs for when I was last looking) on FUTURE gaming just seems fucking ridiculous to me. Maybe if MMORPGs affected my credit. Other than LOTRO and maybe Asheron's Call I've never spent over a year on an MMOPRG and since I usually go for the 3 month subscription, even then it takes nearly two years to rack up a lifetime subscription equilibrium. Nothing has ever come close to being that worth it for me. Even Rift I'll be surprised if I make it to the Summer with and that looks like the best thing since LOTRO for me. We'll see what Bioware brings to the table - that may actually tempt me with all the crazy shit they have planned. Sure I dropped 10 days (~240 hours) worth of honest time and effort into Aion but that's when I was basically 'bed'-ridden with pain. Even that was just an excuse to listen to a shit ton of audio books.

[kali o.]

Since you guys either missed the point or I wasn't clear enough, lets try that again:

In NO way am I implying I don't expect Turbine to make money. What is inherantly deceptive (and nickel & diming) is the essential character specific unlocks that make playing via points (whether you pay for them or grind for free) a path not for "casual" consumers, but suckers that don't know any better.

Things like traits, gold caps, bag space, mounts, fast travel are ESSENTIAL, and if you don't know much about the game, you are not going to realize that. This isn't content we are talking here, this is the difference between your toon being playable and your toon being gimp after a certain point. These are PER CHARACTER unlocks that aren't tied to actual content releases.

The whole "point" system is suppose to work as a valid and APPROPRIATELY priced alternative for the more casual type MMO gamer (whereas the free-to-play grind system is there for folks who can't actually find work that pays over $1.00 an hour, lol). Where I make the call that they are fleecing unsuspecting new players via the pay for points system is the price differential between one month of VIP (10-15 bucks) and trying to accomplish the same via points for 3 toons (9400TP or 100+ bucks or so) -- that's just taking the basic bag, gold, AH, trait and riding skill costs, NOT everything else you get in that one month of VIP.

That difference boils down to greed.

In DDO, that level of difference does not exist. Where LotRO does a better job is releasing NEW and NON-ESSENTIAL content -- and charging for that makes sense. That is where the game should make money.

[Don]

So far the games converted from P2P to F2P pretty much all rely on you not knowing enough about the game to think you can somehow play the game without paying money and still get the same stuff as those who do. When EQ2 went to EQ2X I knew enough about the game that I ended up buying $75 of game cards while they had the double Station Cash deal, so that's like $150 and that covers everything I need (more than that actually, haven't used it up yet before I got bored again), but if I was actually interested in playing EQ2 spending that kind of money is pretty much unavoidable unless I want to have a miserable playing experience.

If it was possible to have an enjoyable gaming experience without paying then the company that makes the game sure won't be in the business for very long. I have never heard of a F2P game that succeeds only by selling fluff stuff. It doesn't have to be buy your raid loot here but people are not so stupid to spend a lot of money on your game without noticeable gain. The one exception might be housing. For some reason people are apparently willing to spend a ton of money decorating their house.

[kali o.]

So far the games converted from P2P to F2P pretty much all rely on you not knowing enough about the game to think you can somehow play the game without paying money and still get the same stuff as those who do.

If it was possible to have an enjoyable gaming experience without paying then the company that makes the game sure won't be in the business for very long.

And yet I've never touched on either of your 'points'...? The crowd that wants to play the whole game for free can go grind their life away. Fine by me. Their job is fulfilled by proving the game is indeed "free to play" as an option and inflating the server population at lower levels.

That's not what we are talking about though. The whole "points" system is in place to offer players the ability to buy content on their own budget/playtime and choose the content they want. It is there to be a payment ALTERNATIVE to monthly subscription. Where we run into issues is when the very core/basics of the game are not only "for sale" to the points player, but failure to purchase these will inevitably lead to a poor game experience or downright gimping of the toon. And these basics are terribly OVERPRICED.

That's not an OPTIONAL purchase, that is a scenario that traps unsuspecting players. And it smacks of greed.

Where I am especially annoyed is the trait locks. These are central to the power and uniqueness behind a given build in lotro. Unlike, say, having Warden as a locked class, this is something that should NOT be a store option...because then we end up with two types of players in game -- gimped and not.

DDO does not do this. Everything for sale there is optional == additional classes, quest packs, races, cosmetic options, some less rare or even common consumables, etc. At no point is the player paying via Points at a disadvantage to the subscriber.

[Julius Seeker]

Just a question. I'm more or less an infrequent visitor, I have zero interest in building a character or spending time battling spiders and such. Will I be able to explore the Shire, The Grey Havens, the Old Forest, an over to Rivendell without too much trouble on just points and such?

[Shrinweck]

Well the Shire is the Hobbit starting area so I would imagine it would be extremely easy to fully explore it.

The Old Forest is also pretty early in so I can't see any trouble with that.

I'm pretty certain the Grey Havens aren't in the game.

Rivendell may be difficult, that's an early to mid 30s area at its lowest.

I feel like I answered this question in the last LOTRO free play thread we had lol

Edit: I was right

The Shire and Bree and available the second you get out of the tutorial. I don't think they really ever implemented anything with the west coast but the stuff towards Imladris is level 28-40 stuff if I recall correctly. You're certainly in the 30s by the time you're hitting Rinvendell for the first time

[Julius Seeker]

Woops, sorry! =)

It hasn't been on my mind for a little while. I probably won't get a chance to sit down and play for a few weeks at the earliest.